


Home is Where

by taranoire



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Inquisition spoilers, M/M, Non-Explicit, Reunion Sex, Sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:06:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2753864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taranoire/pseuds/taranoire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke returns from the Fade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home is Where

Walking back into this room, footsteps feather-light on the floor, is like reentering the world all over again. He drinks it all in, standing in a halo of firelight. Familiar smells creep back in. There’s incense, faint and sweet, and the crisp scent of the fire, and the tang of lyrium in the sheets. Everything is just as he left it. Everything is just as before.

Only the desk has been touched. There are open books, legal documents, an abandoned quill papered with dried ink, the scrawl of familiar writing, clumsy but as sharp as the mind that wielded it.

He delicately brushes the parchment, conscious of any noise he makes, and swallows tightly as he reads. These are letters. Financial statements. A will, written in his own hand, stating that the combined assets of the Hawke and Amell estates are to be left with Fenris upon his death. 

His heart aches as he thinks of Fenris struggling to make sense of all of this; Fenris, who has never owned any property of his own suddenly burdened with these dismal affairs. Hawke will fix this, in time. Hawke will mend these deep wounds. But for now, he has more pressing matters to attend to.

He goes over to the bed. Crouches down on the floor beside it, just in front of the fire. Heat from the flames warms his back comfortingly.

He gazes at Fenris’ sleeping face, calm and emotionless now in the dark cocoon of night. He has not looked on him in at least a year. Not since they were forced to separate in Fereldan. Many things have changed in the world outside this room—wars, alliances, who holds power in what parts of Thedas. Gods have risen and fallen. But Fenris has stayed the same. Fenris is a constant. He has endured, beautiful as the grey before the dawn.

Hawke removes a gauntlet, grimy with congealed blood, and tosses it to the floor. He reaches out to his love, and caresses his face gently, lightly, with the back of his hand. Fenris is deep in sleep, does not even flinch at the touch, and Hawke would have it no other way. He will have suffered these last few days. Weeks. Months. It is hard to say. The Fade certainly felt like an eternity.

(‘Fenris is going to die,’ the demon had said in that awful hell. ‘He is going to destroy himself trying to find you, to save you, and then I will enter his mind, insidious as the air he breathes. I will break him from the inside out and make him my slave. I will have him begging for death. And you will be helpless to stop it.’)

He takes a shaky breath.

Fenris is curled into himself, on Hawke’s side of the bed. He’s wrapped his arms around his pillow and has his face pressed into it as if trying to envelop himself in Hawke’s scent. This alone might have broken Hawke’s heart, but it’s the red favor still wrapped tightly around Fenris’ wrist that brings stinging tears to his eyes. He never should have left him alone. He never should have put him through this.

He strokes his hair. Weaves his fingers into its heat. Presses close, brushes a kiss against his forehead. He closes his eyes and lingers there, unable to think past the pounding of his frightened heart—past the thought that this might all be a dream, a trick of the demon’s nightmare.   
And then Fenris stirs, quietly, and green eyes flutter in the dark, and he hears a sharp, almost frightened inhalation.

  
"Garrett…?"

  
In any other circumstances Hawke might hold back, might give an explanation, but Fenris is here and he is real and alive and it’s impossible to not touch him. He whimpers and kisses him hard, and deep, and Fenris instinctively closes his eyes and moves towards him, tilting his head in such a way that leaves Hawke feeling shaky and overwhelmed. He removes the other gauntlet so that he can cradle his face in his hands, skin to skin, gentle and intimate.

Hawke tastes salt. He draws back, sees the tears running down Fenris’ face, murmurs soft praise to the Maker and then kisses him again, again—please don’t disappear. Don’t die in my arms. Don’t let me leave you.

Fenris sobs, pressing their foreheads together. His eyes are as wet as his kiss. “I thought that—when they said—”

Hawke shushes him, trembling as he kisses his lips, his damp cheeks, his neck. He begins to silently cry. What a mess they both are. “I thought so too.”

Fenris’ warm, calloused hands are on his face, his brilliant green eyes wandering over him, his broad shoulders and the dried blood in his armor. Hawke’s bones ache with exhaustion, with a need to be held, but he does not speak of this.

"They told me you were killed," Fenris says on a whisper. "They told me you had—that you had given yourself to save…a-and I couldn’t, I couldn’t—"

"No more words," Hawke says, because if he hears about the agony he put him through he will never forgive himself. "Please, just let me touch you."

He makes love to him as if it’s the last time

It’s slow, and cathartic, and gentle, like the beat of calm waves against a rock. Fenris is wrapped around him, eyes closed, his breathy, almost soundless moans soft in his ear. Hawke almost forgot this. The feel of his naked heat, the way he moves with him, always perfect, always like he’s somewhere else but still here, with him, thrumming deep and in tandem, a steady growing glow shared between them instead of something taken, something owed.

Fenris turns his head to brush his tear-damp, smooth cheek against his, nuzzling him as he spreads his legs wider, encouraging him with silent cues. He is steady, patient, leading from beneath him without even meaning to. Hawke pays attention to his body, to the breath on his neck, to the way he tenses and relaxes. To the way his fingers curl in his hair.

He kisses the side of his head. “Fenris…” His name, beautiful on his lips. It was once used to hurt him. Mock him. Hawke uses it to pleasure him, to make him whimper, to make him feel soft and desirable and wanted. To make him feel vulnerable, but not enough to make him uncomfortable; not enough to make him think it will be used against him. “Fenris.”

He comes undone, kissing Hawke and moaning softly into his mouth, tense, shaking, teary-eyed. Hawke whispers his name against his lips, lets his tongue slip between them, groans as the wet heat overwhelms him. He moves, then stills, trembling with him, holding him flush against his body.

Fenris suppresses a tight, desperate sound. “I needed you,” he says into his shoulder. “And then you were gone.”

Hawke holds him in a too-tight, too-much embrace that feels like dying. He breathes him in. He will not disappear. “Never again.”


End file.
